Synthetic routes to tungsten disulfide (WS2) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanomaterials (e.g., two-dimensional (2D) monolayers) are of interest for lubricants, catalyst, Li-ion batteries, semiconductors, and photodiodes. Previous efforts to synthesize bulk WS2 nanomaterials involved chemical vapor deposition techniques, fluidized bed reactors, gas-solid reactions, laser ablation, and spray pyrolysis. For the production of 2D metal sulfide monolayer nanomaterials, synthesis have been limited to high temperature solid-state routes, sulfurization with H2S gas, vapor phase routes, exfoliation, and metathesis reaction routes with halide side products that can be detrimental to the application's performance properties. See Y. Feldman et al., Solid State Sciences 2(6), 663 (2000); C. Altavilla et al., Chem. Mater. 23, 3879 (2011); H. R. Gutierrez et al., Nano Lett. 13(8), 3447 (2013); and Y. Yu et al., Nature, Scientific Reports, 2013, 3:1866 DOI: 10.1038/srep01866.
Therefore, a need remains for a solution route for the synthesis of metal chalcogenide monolayer nanomaterials that is scalable, less complex and easier to implement than other synthesis routes.